Frontier was established by Sonny Swe, a cofounder of The Myanmar Times and the son of a former Military Intelligence officer, who was jailed for his work at the newspaper from 2004 to 2013 after the purge of junta-era Prime Minister Khin Nyunt.

[2] Launched in July 2015, Frontier is one of the first privately funded English language news publications to open in Myanmar since the government of Thein Sein abolished the country's repressive censorship regime in 2012.

[5] In July 2016, Frontier ran an editorial by Joern Kristensen, a development consultant and former member of the Mekong River Commission, suggesting that the government of Aung San Suu Kyi cancel the controversial and widely unpopular China-backed Myitsone Dam project in Myanmar's north.

[6] Later that month, the state-run newspaper Kyemon endorsed Kristensen's proposal and called for a "permanent suspension" of the project, in the first clear indication that the government was considering a cancellation of the $800 million dam since it took office that March.

[18] In June 2018, the magazine won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award for Excellence in Business Reporting, for its article "Funny money" along with several honourable mentions.